ABSTRACT
The chapter provides an overview of the states of emergency in Czech law. There are three types of states of emergency in the Czech constitutional order, which involve the adoption of various crisis measures by the Executive, including limitation of fundamental rights. On the other hand, the direct impact of emergencies on the powers of the respective branches of government and the political process is relatively limited. The COVID-19 pandemic brought about an unusually long and repeated state of emergency, which involved unprecedented restrictions of fundamental rights. This triggered disputes over the legal bases for and limits for the Executive action. Later, the Pandemic Act adopted in 2021 introduced tailored measures to deal with the pandemic. Limitations of fundamental rights resulted in intense litigation, which contributed to clarifying the contours of judicial review in emergencies, but encountered many procedural problems of its own and did not manage to overcome all the uncertainties and open issues in the Czech legal regulation of emergencies.
